


Godhunters

by ielenia



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blasphemy, Deicide, Gen, Inspired by A Practical Guide to Evil, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24060559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ielenia/pseuds/ielenia
Summary: Of the five humans, almost nothing was known. People spoke of them – they were feared, revered, despised, loved. No one knew who they were, or how they had done what they had done. It was only known that the five had left, and when they returned a year and a day later, the gods were dead.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	Godhunters

There were five of them. Heroes, perhaps. Villains, maybe. It could be hard to know. Indeed, little was known about them, save a name whispered, rumors of hard people with sharp eyes and sharper blades. People who saw the world for what it was, and who would break it until it was as they wished it to be.

The Godhunters.

There had been a pantheon, once. Five gods, revered and worshipped across the earth, by pious humans who knew better than to doubt, or to fail in their offerings. It seemed like a thing of ancient days, now, but there were still those alive who remembered praying and sacrificing at the temples of the great gods.

There were none still alive who spoke the gods’ names.

Five gods. Names forcibly forgotten, expunged from tongue and ink alike. Still, even now every child knew what they were, or rather, what they had been. 

God of Hearth. 

God of Growth. 

God of Earth. 

God of Sky. 

God of Death.

Of the five humans, almost nothing was known. People spoke of them – they were feared, revered, despised, loved. No one knew who they were, or how they had done what they had done. It was only known that the five had left, and when they returned a year and a day later, the gods were dead.

Legends abound about these five figures, sensational or demonizing or extolling. But never did any storyteller pry too close to the truth, for they prized their lives too highly to wish to learn what godkillers wanted secret. The true story has only been given once, when the Godhunters united for the last time, and each told the others what they had done.

What follows is that story.

* * *

  
  


Of five Godhunters, the first had found their way to the hearth of the gods. There, they had found a being of flame, with warmth so comforting that it was all the fighter could to not curl up before it and sleep forever.

Of five Godhunters, the second had travelled unseen to the hidden, green places of the world. There, they had found a maze of flowers so beautiful and fragrant that the thief wished nothing more than to stay and dance among them forever.

Of five Godhunters, the third climbed to the top of the highest tree on the highest mountain then existing. The air stretched out forever in every direction around them, and as they looked out into that infinite, ever-changing expanse, the mage very nearly lost themself to their curiosity forever.

Of five Godhunters, the fourth had strode the long earth for many years. They knew the texture of rock and the taste of dirt. Of all their companions, it was the ranger alone who paused, who wondered. Who wished, for just a moment, to abandon their task, and to allow the world to remain as they had known it, forever.

Of five Godhunters, the fifth went to the greatest, most populous of all the cities of humanity. There, they travelled to funerals, to deathbeds and graveyards, and amidst all of that grief, the bard was hard pressed to do more than weep and weep forever.

  
  


* * *

  
  


In the hearth of the gods, the fighter shook the lethargy from their limbs and drew their axe. The blade turned white-hot as it swung towards the fiery god, but the metal was true and the arms behind it strong. And so the fighter learned that gods could bleed.

In a great garden, the thief slipped beneath the lovely, soft flowers to the fruits below. These, too, were temptation incarnate, ripe and sweet. But with dagger rather than teeth did the thief pierce the fruit’s exterior. With swift, sure hands, they stole the first seed.

Atop a tree, at the peak of a mountain, the mage tore their concentration away from the infinite expanse of sky. With skill born of years of study, the mage gathered all their magic into two carefully cupped hands. Then they yielded to the tugging wind and let their fingers loosen, until like ink in water the magic held within began to spread and diffuse into the whirling breeze.

In the depth of the valley where five had met, the ranger reminded themself of what they had sworn to do. Tears fell from their face, sinking into the ground beneath them. A lingering look, a bittersweet farewell, and the ranger began to walk.

Among the greatest crowds of humanity, the bard dried their tears. At each life’s passing, they told a story. One of body’s failure and soul’s passage. Of the dangers of the final passing. Of the key, the black iron key that opened every coffin as the god of death brought each soul safely to the other world.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The fighter’s body was scorched and burning from each of the hearth god’s blows. Yet though their arms shook with exhaustion and their skin blazed with fresh flames, they fought on. Their axe swung again and again and again, and with each of countless strikes, more drops of sizzling blood fell to the stone ground.

The thief was slow, and careful. Never did they give any hint of their presence, save for the thin cuts left in countless fruits and pods. One by one, they stole every seed in the lush, deep garden.

The mage sent their mind out to seek their wayward magic, and waited. By the time the sun had set seven times, it had reached the farthest reaches of the endless sky. By the time the sun had risen seven times more, all the air in the world was steeped in it. The mage reached out and gave the slightest of tugs. At the edges of the world, the magic moved, almost imperceptibly, back towards its master’s hands. The edges of the sky moved with it. 

The mage grinned, and tugged again.

The ranger dug their toes into soft loam as they walked. They slept, and lay their head directly upon hard earth. They clung to the walls of deep fjords, form pressed against sheer cliffs. They raced laughing across the tops of plateaus. They sang duets with the echoes in caves, and wrote poems to mountains as they climbed them. Each journey was a return, each return a reunion, and so it was with joy that the ranger greeted every familiar landscape.

The bard spoke. At funerals, in bars, in dark alleys and the bright lit centers of expensive rooms. They told of a black iron key that unlocked coffins for the god of death. And where they spoke, belief _shifted,_ ever so slightly. It spread like ripples in a pond, and the bard knew well how to amplify the waves. They watched with the eyes of a proud, cautious parent, as a new ornament began to adorn caskets: a lock hole, wrought in iron for those who could pay, and painted in black for those who could not. The bard whispered and shouted their tale until priests of death began to wear black iron keys around their necks wherever they went. Still, the bard spoke.

  
  


* * *

  
  


For a year, the fighter burned and swung their axe. Drop by drop, the blood welled upon a blade that burned ever hotter for it. Drop by drop, the god’s flame dimmed. After a full year had passed, the metal of the axe glowed hotter and brighter than did the now flickering god. As the new day dawned, the fighter raised their now-brilliant axe and swung it down upon the neck of the God of Hearth. The flames flared for a last, brief instant, then faded to ash. 

For a year, the thief stole from the god’s garden. When a year was up, not a single seed remained to take, and the god had still detected nothing of their presence. As the new day dawned, the thief crept into the heart of the garden, where the god itself sat. The thief’s knife sliced through the god’s back, just as it had sliced through the flesh of so many fruits. Then the thief reached out, and with no fanfare, they plucked out the seed at the god’s heart. The God of Growth fell to the ground, and moved no more. 

For the remainder of the year, the mage called their magic back to themself, one small pull after another. Each time, the boundaries of the sky shrank a little bit more, pulled along with the magic that suffused it. At the end of one year, all of the mage’s magic – and all of the sky with it – was held once more between two cupped hands. As the new day dawned, the mage squeezed their hands together, and all the infinity of the God of Sky was compressed down to a single point, and then to nothing at all. 

For a year, the ranger reminded the earth of their love of it. With each passing day, the god remembered that devotion. And, such a strange thing for a god, it wanted. It yearned to be seen in truth by the eyes that watched it with such affection. Stranger still, it yearned to know this ranger in return. After a year of waiting, of circling and wishing, the God of Earth and the ranger met. For the first time in all its existence, the great god formed itself into a single being, a form made of dirt and rock and clay. A being the ranger had never before seen, and yet had been looking at all their life. 

The two figures embraced, one of mineral and one of flesh. They spent hours together, each watching, learning, loving, the other. Then the new day dawned, and the ranger leaned up to press a single, gentle kiss to the god’s great boulder of a head. The God of Earth’s new form, so fragile and exposed, scattered into dust at the touch. The ranger wept.

  
Over the course of a year, the bard wove their tale. At the year’s start, there were no stories to link the god of death with any sort of key, iron or otherwise. By the middle of the year, every story told how the god of death carried with it a black iron key. By the year’s end, the god of death  _ was _ a key of black iron, finely wrought. In the stories, at least. But the bard knew stories well. They knew that of all creatures, gods were formed of stories told. If a god’s name was spoken, it could bring them back from any annihilation. And if the stories told that the God of Death was an iron key, then the God of Death was in truth an iron key. As the new day dawned, the bard drew from their pocket a key, finely wrought from the purest black iron. They dropped it to the street below them, and crushed it to powder beneath their boot. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the song "Godhunter," by the Aviators. 
> 
> Deicide is by far the most epic of myths.


End file.
